metaphysics enjoying a State monopoly, the principles of which are
impressed into every head in earliest youth, so earnestly, so deeply,
and so firmly, that, unless the mind is miraculously elastic, they
remain indelible. In this way the groundwork of all healthy reason is
once for all deranged; that is to say, the capacity for original thought
and unbiased judgment, which is weak enough in itself, is, in regard to
those subjects to which it might be applied, for ever paralyzed and
ruined.

_Demopheles._ Which means, I suppose, that people have arrived at a
conviction which they won't give up in order to embrace yours instead.

_Philalethes_. Ah! if it were only a conviction based on insight. Then
one could bring arguments to bear, and the battle would be fought with
equal weapons. But religions admittedly appeal, not to conviction as the
result of argument, but to belief as demanded by revelation. And as the
capacity for believing is strongest in childhood, special care is taken
to make sure of this tender age. This has much more to do with the
doctrines of belief taking root than threats and reports of miracles.
If, in early childhood, certain fundamental views and doctrines are
paraded with unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnestness
never before visible in anything else; if, at the same time, the
possibility of a doubt about them be completely passed over, or touched
upon only to indicate that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition,
the resulting impression will be so deep that, as a rule, that is, in
almost every case, doubt about them will be almost as impossible as
doubt about one's own existence. Hardly one in ten thousand will have
the strength of mind to ask himself seriously and earnestly--is that
true? To call such as can do it strong minds, _esprits forts_, is a
description more apt than is generally supposed. But for the ordinary